Sick of waiting: Are some Canadians paying for expensive, risky medical treatment?

The pain from his affliction left him desperate for a medical solution.

Randy Richmond is writing a three part series, Patients losing patience,which is taking a look at the hundreds of thousands of seriously ill Canadians who have been left without satisfactory care by the Canadian heath system. Richmond is focusing on the folk who are going outside the country seeking medical help.

Randy is a writer I really liked when I worked at the paper. He's an excellent reporter. I'm sure this series will be part of his WONA (Western Ontario Newspaper Awards) portfolio next year. Still, this first story, as interesting as it was, left me with some serious questions, such as: "What is the Laser Spine Institute?"

You see this question was important to me as I also have a bad back. I have come to believe, based on what I've been told by a number of doctors, that when it comes to bad backs often less treatment may be the best treatment. I read in a Harvard Medical School health newsletter that "doctors are beginning to question whether too many surgeries are performed to treat degenerative disease. As for herniated disks, a recent study found that surgical and nonsurgical treatments worked equally well." The newsletter editorial told me "the decision whether to have surgery is a matter of patient preference more than anything else."

On LiveStrong.com I read that the Cleveland Clinic and the Mayo Clinic both advise trying other less intrusive therapies, like massage, physical therapy and anti-inflammation drugs before back surgery. Laser surgery has been touted as the latest, least invasive, most successful technique with the least amount of recovery time but these hospitals warn that there are several disadvantages to laser spine surgery.

Without a cane, I would not get to my computer.

Unsuccessful back surgeries have become so common in the States that there is now an acronym: FBSS (Failed Back Surgery Syndrome.)

My back can be so bad that it drops me to my knees but my family doctor has poo-pooed my complaints. High tech laser surgery has never been an option. It has never been offered to me by my present doctor nor by my former.

I've been advised to apply cold to alleviate pain and to prevent or reduce the swelling. After 48 hours I've been told to apply warmth to increase blood flow and promote healing. I should limit bed rest to a couple of days, at most,  and then add limited exercise therapy. The theory is that strong, flexible muscles are less prone to injury and will help to strengthen the back and support the spine.

All my family doctors over the years have given me sheets detailing back exercises. I have never been given so much as a prescription for the pain. For me, this has been the extent of the Canadian solution to serious back pain. And so far, it's working. Hold the knife and hold the laser, thank-you. (I wrote this in 2011. I'm adding this in 2018. My back pain situation may have improved a little.  I'm glad that I have not had back surgery.)

In Randy's first installment, a fellow from Windsor suffering from a spinal problem was unable to get the medical help he perceived he needed. In desperation, he turned to Kelly Meloche, the head of Windsor's International Health Care Providers.

The man told Randy. "Before I knew it, I was in Tampa, Florida, at the Laser Spine Institute. There, doctors did a laser procedure not available in Canada. The fellow said, "I walked off the operation table. I felt great. It was crazy. It was almost surreal."

As it turned out, the 2007 operation worked only for a time. Things looked great for a year and a half, then the Windsor fellow's headaches returned. I wondered if his experience was common. I googled "Laser Spine Institute Tampa complaints" and I read:

My husband had surgery in May 2008. A decent experience, and he was mostly pain free after...for a few months. Now he is just as he was before surgery. Why? I can't explain it, but this certainly makes the out of pocket payment not worth it for us. Apart from the medical, they dropped us like a hot potato after the cash was in hand. Multiple phone calls were not returned. A 3 month and 6 month follow up came in the same envelope. When we managed to reach someone, and complain about calls not being returned, we were directed to call others on the staff. Apparently they were too busy to call us. Insurance forms were not submitted as promised upon our departure - took 4 months to get them to make the claims. BTW, our next door neighbor also went there with unsuccessful results, and the same dismissal. They don't like it when you do not become a new testimonial!

I looked down the comment list. Some were positive and then I spotted one from a Canadian out of Lachine, Quebec.

Don't go there!! Please I beg of you not to waste your money or your health. I had a discectomy done at LSI in 2008 and they ruined my back for life. Not only did they damage my nerve endings, they permanently destabilized my spine. My current neurosurgeon is not sure if my S1 nerve will ever fully recover. I had to be rushed to the emergency ward the evening after the LSI surgery. LSI did not take any steps to rectify the issue. The hospital informed me that I was not the first patient from LSI to be rushed to the ER after surgery.

I read more comments:

• . . . all I can say about LSI is DO NOT GO THERE!!!
• . . . everything was fine for six weeks and then the pain came back. now it's as bad as ever.
• . . . bad experience with LSI. I am in much more pain than before I walked in.
• . . . Do NOT go to LSI. I had surgery there on Sept. 26, 2007. I cannot describe the hell I have been through, physically and financially, with these people . . . filing suit for medical malpractice, fraud, and malfeasance.

To be fair, the Windsor fellow still credits the laser surgery in Florida for relieving much of his pain, although he was left with a $17,000 medical fee. But the laser operation didn't stop him from seeking more medical help. He is now crossing the border at Windsor to travel into Michigan to get $1200 botox injections.

As I said, not all the comments on the Internet about LSI are negative. One person wrote: "I had surgery on July 16, 2008 and have considered it a great success."

So, what does one believe? I leave the final word to Mark McLaughlin, MD, FACS, FAANS, from Princeton who wrote an article titled: The Laser Myth in Spine Surgery

Laser Spine Surgery: It has almost zero usefulness in your spine surgery and in fact may be harmful - R. McLaughlin MD

No laser surgery for me, thank you. Now, where did I put those sheets of doctor-recommended back strengthening exercises?
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The following is here simply because it was in the original post. It has been removed as of March 2018.

On the other hand there are the newspaper articles, such as the ones from the St. Petersburg Times, about a questionable Florida surgeon who gained fame for his laser approach to curing spinal problems:  Back doctor sues and Is surgeon innovative, or unfit? or this article titled Treat the Leg or Pull it?

A couple of months after Randy Richmond did his article, Bloomberg did a story on the Florida laser spine surgery clinics: Laser Spine Surgery More Profitable Than Google Sees Complaints. Follow the link if you're interested.

I don't know what to believe but I have decided not to go to Florida. No laser surgery for me, thank you. Now, where did I put those sheets of doctor-recommended back strengthening exercises?
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If you haven't guessed, I support the Canadian health care system. Click the link to discover why.

An open Letter to the Editor of The London Free Press, a Sun Media newspaper

This is an open Letter to the Editor of The London Free Press.

Click on image to enlarge.

According to Canoe health expert and Sun Media columnist Dr. Gifford-Jones, the fluoridation of water is useless and fluoride toothpaste is a dangerous biological poison. This newspaper columnist went on to say in a Quebecor Media story that several studies involving as many as 480,000 children found fluoride provided no protection against tooth decay.

The QMI "expert" even raised the spectre of childhood death in his attack on fluoridation. I wrote expert in quotation marks to indicate my disdain just as Ian Gillespie did to indicate his disdain for some supposed "experts" in his recent column.

It is time for Gillespie to take his own advice and give his head a shake. The Free Press columnist need not look to the Internet for "ignorant fear-mongering at its worst." I think it is clear from the above that he can find it in the pages of his own news operation — Quebecor Media Inc.
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The beauty of the Internet is the free flow of ideas and information. If you can't get a letter to the editor published, post it.

Use enough hooks and someone using Google, or another search engine, will stumble upon your letter. Also put links to your Facebook page and Twitter account in your post. If you get enough hits your blog post will gain importance and may appear near the top of the list returned by a search engine query.

Ian Gillespie asks, "What next? Fluoride killing polar bears?" According to The Free Press, the answer may be young children.

Aiming his well-known wit at the anti-fluoridation folk, Gillespie misses mark.

A recent opinion piece by The London Free Press journalist  Ian Gillespie has further muddied the already murky fluoridated waters.

I was very disappointed by his ad hominem attacks on those with whom he disagrees. Instead of using facts to disprove the anti-fluoride position, Gillespie attacked those holding those beliefs. He painted them as crazy conspiracy believers. And in cases where his opponents based their arguments on expert opinions, Gillespie ridicules those experts as well.

Ian mocks London city councillor Denise Brown for suggesting to The Free Press, "If you do any research on the Internet, you’ll find scientists believe there are health risks.”

Click to enlarge.

Ian's witty retort: "And if you do more Internet 'research,' you’ll also discover 'experts' who argue that aliens hijacked the Voyager 2 spacecraft, Paul McCartney died in a 1966 car crash, Elvis Presley is alive and the Apollo moon landing was a hoax."

And if you, Ian Gillespie, do more research you will find the following published by Sun Media, written by Canoe health expert and columnist Dr. Gifford-Jones, and found on The London Free Press Internet site:

"It's shocking that 25% of North Americans over age 43, and 42% of those over 65 years of age, have no teeth!

"(The doctor featured in the article carried by The Free Press) Dr. Judd also believes that the fluoridation of water and the use of fluoride toothpaste is a useless, dangerous biological poison. He says calcium fluoride seeps into enamel, making it weak and brittle, destroying 83 enzymes along with adenosine diphosphatase.

"I couldn't agree more. (Dr. Gifford-Jones writes.) Look at the warning on fluoride toothpaste. Parents are told to watch children under six years of age while they brush their teeth. To be safe, only a tiny amount of toothpaste is used, and none should be swallowed. That should tell you something! In 1974, a three-year old child had fluoride gel placed on his teeth. The hygienist handed him a glass of water but rather than rising out his mouth, he drank it. A few hours later, he was dead.

"If fluoride toothpaste is the answer to dental decay, why is it that 98% of Europe is fluoride-free? Sweden, Germany, Norway, Holland, Denmark and France stopped using fluoridation 29 years ago. These are not backward, depressed nations.

"The sole argument for fluoridation is that it reduces tooth decay. But several studies involving as many as 480,000 children found no beneficial evidence between fluoridated and non-fluoridated communities.

"Dr. Hardy Limeback, Professor of Dentistry at the University of Toronto, says children under three should never use fluoridated toothpaste or drink fluoridated water, and mothers should never use Toronto tap water to prepare baby formula."

I want to go on record as saying I am not frightened by the amount of fluoride being put into London's water. I believe dangerous concentrations of fluoride are only found in drinking waters contaminated with unregulated, naturally occurring fluorides. London is very conservative when it comes to the amount of fluoride added to our drinking water.

But many people are concerned. As long as papers, such as The London Free Press, are telling them a young child died from a fluoride treatment, some folk will use bottled water rather than tap and try their best to stay clear of all fluoride -- even that found in toothpaste and mouthwash.

At one time, it was believed that fluoride only worked topically. It was said that once ingested, as in drinking water, its ability to fight dental caries was curtailed. That belief is now in question.  But,when I worked at The Free Press the only-works-topically mantra was still being repeated. I chatted with a professor at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at Western University who confided that putting fluoride in water was inefficient as it only works topically. But he would not go on record with such a view. The whole issue was simply too emotionally charged.

My point? The anger, distrust, public ridicule surrounding this issue all work to prevent discussion. Journalists are a big part of this problem. And that is sad. Journalists should be advocates of reason and independent thinking. Instead, all too often journalists are herd animals.

I expect more from my daily paper and I certainly expected more from Ian Gillespie. The Free Press is a paper sadly in need of some thoughtful writing and solid editing. This column of Gillespie's should have been spiked. Wait. The spikes left with the editors.
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As I said, I am not concerned about the amount of fluoride found in London Ontario tap water. Just last month the EPA in the United States lowered the maximum recommended concentration of fluoride for drinking water. London was ahead of the EPA. Our fluoride level is inline with the new proposed U.S. guidelines.

But, and it is a big but, if you are already frightened by fluoride in your water, the recent move by the EPA does nothing to allay your fears. Learning that after decades of use the correct amount of fluoride to be added to drinking water without causing any health problems is still being adjusted is downright worrisome. These people need their fears addressed in an adult manner. Condescension is not called for nor is it productive.

Gillespie quotes UWO professor Tim Blackmore, who teaches media and information studies:

“Ignorance is a lot easier and a lot more convincing than knowledge. Knowledge takes time, it takes thinking and it takes figuring. Ignorance doesn’t take any of those things. It just takes belief.”

Ian, I think the professor may have been talking about you.

A symbolic icon for mediocrity

What makes a newspaper great? And being great is very important today as even great doesn't always cut it and mediocre quickly will be history.

It is the staff.

At the end of the month one of Canada's finest papers, at least it was once one of Canada's finest papers, is again suffering the loss of some excellent staff members - four from editorial and more from advertising. The ones in editorial took voluntary buyouts; the others got pink slips and separation payments to ease the financial pain.

Sue Bradnam, the paper's chief photographer, will be gone by the end of the month. She is a talented photographer and will do just fine but the paper will miss her. Behind the scenes, she was a constant, quiet fighter for her department.

In the new world of the Internet, Sue could have been an amazing addition to the team. She always has neat ideas and with the unlimited room offered by the Web, many of her ideas could have been put into practice. The reality of newsprint, with its set physical size, contained imaginative people like Sue. With the might of Sun Media and Quebecor behind her, pushing her on, supporting her, rather than pushing her out the door, she might have developed a unique but large following for her work. Just think of the ads that could have been attached to her work . . .

Speaking of ads, Jill Worthington of the Special Sections department has been dismissed. The work will be done off site, as I understand it. Now, if we had linked Jill and Sue together maybe we would have created a money machine. A coupling that might have been an Internet dream team, but we will never know.

Editors Tom Bogart and Ralph Bridgland are leaving the paper. Two more editors gone. Fire up the spell check. Reporter Joe Matyas is also leaving after decades covering the news for Londoners. Joe is such a keener about all things web-based that he has actually taken courses in writing code for the Web.

He uses his talents to run his church's website. At one time Joe's code was better than the code being used by The Free Press; I could load Joe's pages quicker than those of the mighty Free Press. The London Free Press is losing a forward looking talent in the loss of Joe.

There is a painting of a newsboy hanging on the wall at the paper. Paul Berton, editor-in-chief, uses it as the icon accompanying his online work. (Paul's unretouched icon at left.)

The painting originally had a rich, black background - not the grey and washed out look appearing on the Web. Maybe Berton is trying to tell us something with his symbolically fading icon. Are you Paul?

Just for fun, I set a black and a highlight for Paul's icon. It took but seconds to give it the rich, punchy look of the original art. What was it that I said about mediocrity at the beginning of this post?

[You don't want to be too much of a smart aleck when you write this stuff. This post corrects an error this old, blogging geezer would have thought impossible to make. A former editor at The Free Press alerted me to my error. Thank-you! I have always admitted that I needed an editor.  )-:  ]

Are there still words best left unsaid?

Maybe I see newspapers differently that you do. To me newspapers are special. I invite a newspaper into my home. It sits with me every morning at my breakfast table and shares stories with me, brings me up to speed on what has happened over the past 24 hours, while I drink my coffee, eat my cereal and just generally wake up.

I find it jarring when my friend asks me, "Why didn't he go after the writer of this crap...?" I change the conversation, I turn the page.

"She pisses off the wrong customer...," my friend, the newspaper, continues.

Now, the word crap I can take but I don't need it bandied about at the breakfast table. But the word piss has no place in day-to-day conversation. This is not the language of someone I want to wake up to. I'm not a prude, honest. I just recall what these words once meant.

One of my favourite columnists at The London Free Press likes to entertain and enlighten me with witty conversation and wise words. He makes me think and laugh at the same time. Ian Gillespie is a fine fellow with whom to share breakfast. He may offend but he is rarely offensive.

Ian has a grasp of English that seems to escape some of his superiors — in rank at the paper, not in class or writing abililty. P. J. Harston likes to throw around the term "wanker". He put the word to good use in his on-line piece, "Earth Day? Screw it!" (P.J. boldly used another questionable word right in his headline.)

Thank goodness for the redesign. Many of The London Free Press links are broken. You will be unable, at least in the short term, to read the Harston piece. (Harston the interactive manager must take some of the blame for all the broken links. I imagine if Harston was looking for a term to describe an interactive manager who cannot get his Internet code correct, he might reach no deeper into his rich vocabulary than the previous paragraph.)

Years ago I knew an English girl, Liz, who was staying with a girlfriend in Detroit. Liz brought the album Hair into her friend's home, but when her girlfriend's father, a Detroit policeman, heard the lyrics Liz was on the way home. I thought he over-reacted.

I would not have expected him to run out and buy the album or get tickets to the musical. Nor would the folk behind the production of Hair be surprise to learn that he was not to be counted among their audience. The Hair folk were not interested in having people like our Detroit policeman among their fans.

Why is it that The London Free Press appears not to be interested in having people like me among their fans?

Don't blame the 24-hour news cycle

On the weekend I read an opinion piece examining how the media reported the death of Edward (Ted) Kennedy — the writer claimed to be taking a view "through the lens of North American journalism." After working for almost four decades in the photojournalism business, some of that time with the author of the opinion piece, I can say that I don't know what lens Mr. Cornies is referring to.

The point of his column was that today nothing is out of bounds when it comes to reporting the news. Journalists are no longer discreet. Why? The author sees lots of reasons: "The relentless appetite of the 24-hour news cycle among information-hungry media outlets, the proliferation of social media, the rise of a more shrill and less genteel political discourse, and the rupturing of the once-impenetrable walls of media institutions . . ."

Maybe he's right, maybe not, but I'll tell you one thing: The writer, Larry Cornies, is still genteel. There will be no overt mud slinging from Mr. Cornies. He writes that Joseph Kennedy, the father of John, Robert, and Ted, was "a successful businessperson and ambassador who built a fortune by the age of 30 . . . "

He mentions that old Joe Kennedy "groomed his sons for political life" and that they were "made in their father's image." In the context of Larry's writing, it sounds very positive. Dad was a success and his boys were just like dad.

All may be true but the whole truth, the complete, unvarnished story, is very different. John Kennedy was a womanizer, Robert Kennedy has similar stories tarnishing his memory, and even Larry allows that Ted had the scandal of the Mary Jo Kopechne buried in a very shallow grave in his past. The Kennedy boys followed in their father Joe's footsteps — all were womanizers.

Joseph Kennedy was brazen in his escapades with other women. In 1928 he had an almost public affair with Hollywood's Gloria Swanson. Rose, Joe's wife, handled the humiliating situations by pretending they weren't happening or she blamed the press. In Rose's memoir, written by Robert Coughlin with her approval, she is quoted as saying that gossip and slander were "the price one pays for being in public life."

With no 24-hour news deadlines, no Internet, none of the stuff Larry Cornies lists, the press was apparently reporting Joseph Kennedy's indiscretions to the dismay of his long-suffering wife. Nothing genteel here.

Why did the media give his son, John, a free pass? Why did they refuse to report John Kennedy's wrong doings. I am sure Rose Kennedy would not argue as does Mr. Cornies that it was because of the ". . . self-imposed constraints that had shaped their earlier formality and deference." The look-the-other-way reporting on the JFK White House reveals an endemic media blight. Even the media label for the Kennedy's time in office, Camelot, is tainted by this blight.

After the war in Vietnam ended in defeat, it was not just American legislators whose lies were laid bare. It was also the American press. We now know the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a creation of the U.S. government to give it a reason to go to war. Why did we not know it then? It was because of the media blight was hiding the truth.

President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara claimed the air strikes against the North Vietnamese were “retaliation” for the “unequivocal,” “unprovoked” attack by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on U.S. destroyers “on routine patrol” in “international waters.” As the war in Viet Nam escalated more lies were told but the media remained on side.

How did all these lies escape detection? Time Magazine rewrote some of their correspondents' stories when the stories did not mesh with the government's version of events. Time deferred to the government Time and Time again — issue after issue.

At a newspaper seminar I met a famous-in-the-media journalist, a speaker at the seminar, who had reported from Saigon. He told me that he and others in the field groaned when they saw General Westmoreland gracing the cover of Time. They saw this not as news but as a PR coup for the military. The Saigon-based correspondents and the New York rewrite desk were detailing two different wars, he said.Today we know the reporters in the field had it right and much of what we read at the time had it so very, very wrong.

During that war, now decades past, Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann argued for greater care, greater discrimination in killing. He is quoted as saying to David Halberstam, Saigon correspondent for the New York Times, "The best weapon for killing is the knife . . . the next best is a rifle. The worst is an airplane, and after that the worst is artillery."

Vann went on to argue that pilots and artillery commanders needed easy targets, and small villages were easy targets. Unfortunately, the possibility of hitting a VC stronghold was much less than that of killing innocent peasants.

Fast forward to today, to Afghanistan, where U.S. planes, including a B-52 bomber and an AC-130 helicopter gunship, dropped seven 2,000 lb. bombs killing dozens of Afghan women and children and injuring scores more. Did the story receive strong play in the U.S. media today? Or were these deaths explained away with claims strikingly similar to those used decades ago during the war in Vietnam?

In the words of a colonel from the Viet Nam era, Colonel Daniel Boone Porter, we are still ". . . killing the people we are are here to help."

Curious to know what images from the war in Afghanistan were being withheld from the American people, and Canadian for that matter, I searched the Internet. I soon stopped. The images were heart breaking. I cannot describe the horror I found. War is hell and the images were worse than anything  had every imagined. I now have a small window was causes military people involved in the violence of war to suffer post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

If you want to know the identity of the Argentinian mistress — Maria Belen Chapur — of Governor Mark Sandford, CNN is ready to inform you and inform you again and again and yet again. The death of Michael Jackson is such big news that it pushes everything first to the back burner and then right off the stove. The relentless appetite of the 24-hour news cycle is satisfied with quantity and not quality.

It is not the last shards of constraint, self-censorship and inhibition that are gone, but what we are seeing is media  maturity under attack. I do so wish you had been right, Larry. (See Addendum at bottom of post.)
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A few important additional comments. Larry Cornies was an editor with The London Free Press for years. He is a smart man and a gentleman. When it came time to publish this post I fell back on the expert assistance of an old friend and retired newspaper editor — a man very much like Larry Cornies. My friend caught a number of embarrassing mistakes in my spelling, my word usage, and my grammar. (And I, of course, corrected those and made more.)

It takes a lot of courage to put one's thoughts down on the printed page. You just know that someone, like me, will take a different tack.

The editorial ranks have been thinned at most newspapers. That's sad. Even editors can use an editor. A good editor might have warned Larry Cornies that his take on the history of the media was a view seen through rose coloured glasses.
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Addendum:

Today, Monday, the Huffington Post carried a story saying, "Last week McChrystal (Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan) said troops "must change the way that we think, act and operate" in newly released counterinsurgency guidance. McChrystal hopes to instill a new approach in troops to make the safety of villagers the top priority.

McChrystal said the supply of fighters in the Afghan insurgency is "essentially endless." This is the reason violence continues to rise. He called on troops to think of how they would expect a foreign army to operate in their home country "among your families and your children, and act accordingly."
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In the coming weeks and months I may take a look at some of the myths so prevalent in the media and the buzzwords that accompany these myths.

Cheers,
Rockinon